Micro vs. Macro: A Reflection on the Potentials of Field Analysis

Abstract

One rationale for the renewed focus on media production is the rapid and deep changes in the media and cultural industries. Media studies in general and production studies in particular have had problems keeping up. In many areas we simply do not know what is going on. Thus, there is a need for catching up and recruiting young researchers. But at the same time as we specialize and focus on media production, we ought to remind ourselves that our field is a sub-discipline in cultural sociology, itself an interdisciplinary subfield between humanities and the social sciences with ambitions to do critical and creative research across established disciplines and to expand methodological repertoires in the interdisciplinary borderlands. Our new emphasis on media production must therefore be understood as a strategic response to societal changes and not as an invitation to break with the fundamental understanding of media and cultural research as occupied with what John B. Thompson once coined as a ‘tripartite approach’ (Thompson, 1990: 307). There will always be, and should always be in media and cultural research, a sense of unity across the division of labour between researchers focusing on production, content and reception. Future media and cultural production research should continue to link these areas of research, and also investigate the connections between them.